Hours after withdrawing from the Chumar region in Ladakh, Chinese PLA soldiers were today reported to have crossed into Indian territory again and stationed themselves on a hillock.
Official sources said about 35 PLA men returned to Chumar in northeast Ladakh and were perched on a hillock claiming the area to be part of China while another 300 soldiers were maintaining presence close to Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The standoff in Demchok and Chumar had cast a shadow on yesterday's summit talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The Indian Army, which had starting scaling down operations from the area following the Chinese withdrawal last night, put a halt and again started pitching their tents for a possible fresh stand-off, the sources said.
They said that nearly 300 Chinese soldiers were spotted across the perceived LAC with many of them stationed in their vehicles while others on foot.
This, the sources said, was apparently done by Chinese PLA as the Indian army had not completely withdrawn from the region which is part of Jammu and Kashmir.
Chinese troops, without any border meeting, had started withdrawing from the area at 9:45 PM and the Indian army had also started reducing their presence in the area.
However, as a part of its drill, some Army presence was maintained in the area to verify whether the Chinese had actually returned to their territory which was possible only after the break of dawn tomorrow.
In the morning, after Indian army spotted PLA presence close to the LAC, it was decided to stop reduction of troops till it was verified that the Chinese have gone back to their camps located 10 kms from the LAC.
The tension in this area erupted on Sunday when some of the Chinese workers, who were constructing road on their side, started entering into the Indian side and also claimed that they had orders to build road upto Tible, five km deep into the Indian territory.
